We know team members will not be available to work on the project because of planned events like vacations and holidays. Those are easy to account for in the project resource calendar.
But, what about the work that takes time away from working on the project? Email maintenance, illness, corporate meetings, staff meetings, HR administration, etc. What standard percent of a 40 hour week are people using to account for this type of non-project work? 12% - 15%?
Mark Saving Changes...
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Hans RobbersSenior Director| SalesforceVlissingen, Netherlands
Mark
Good question. Teh way I deal with it in my projects is to take a percentage of 20 to 25% for a normal organisation in normal times. The 20 to 25% accommodate for all events, e.g. holidays, illness, training, non-project activities etc. More important it also includes loss of time due to unavailability
However if the project is scheduled around X-mas or the summer holidays I normally add two weeks duration for holidays compensation.
In case the organisation or the project is staffed with a lot of part-timers or there is 4 day work week I comepnsation for that as well by app 5%. This to compensate for unavailability thus waiting to ask questions, scheduling meetings etc.
Hi Mark,
I think that depend very much by project managment processes...I mean in big and structured companies I spent many time in that activites (20%) in other companies ...less (5%)....
Depend also by PM and ability to take smart meeting, email!
If - for example - PM write email very long...and all staff write similar... :-) if meeting are quickly and smart...
bye!
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George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
I agree with the other posts, I use 80% of duration as actual usable time to fit the project effort., while the other 20% is lost (from a project perspective) with organizational obligations such as timesheets, department meetings, socializing etc. I remember a statistic that pointed top this number as an industry average but I cannot recall where or when. However, based on own experience 80/20 seems accurate enough in most organizations. Saving Changes...
Gilbert AndersonSoftware Director| Williams InternationalMadison, Al, United States
This will not be of much help on the first project of a particular type, but I use historical data to build estimates for subsequent software projects. On the average, I know how many hours it takes to develop a requirement, code a requirement, unit test a requirement, and integration test a requirement. I have unique work order numbers for each task so I can segregate the costs easily. Since everyone charges 8 hours per day, this system takes the lost hours into account.
A side benefit of this system is that I can see if a particular team member's production rate is abnormally low. This data has allowed me to intervene with direct employees and outsource companies before it was too late. I think the concept can be applied to non-software project by a good selection of metrics. Saving Changes...
Andrew BudkiewiczProject Manager| Eli Lilly& Co LtdBasingstoke, United Kingdom
In my organisation, Contract staff have a 90/10 ratio and employees have a 70/30 ratio project/non project time.
The only watchout I would have is getting agreement from the resources to use the same criteria for what falls under project vs non project activity. Extreme example - You are writing an email to a very senior person regarding a sensitive issue on a project, with writing, reviewing/re-reviewing it takes 2hrs (I did say it was an extreme example). Do you track that time as email NPT or as project time. I asked this question at a team meeting and there pretty much was an even split of oppinions. This discrepancy can screw up the accuracy of NPT reporting Saving Changes...
Jeff DahlProject Leader| Edward JonesMaryland Heights, Mo, United States
We always use a 75/25 split for defining a normal work day. The 25% defines everything not work related. The 75% is then divided up among competing projects the person may be working on.
We haev talked about changing the % to a more 65/35 if a person is working on more than a single project. We haev seen some studies that mutli tasking wastes more time as a person "switches" his/her mind set from one project to another.
